From Cinnabar Island
by Oliver Jasmine
Summary: In the pokemon mansion, a scent like afterbirth comes up through the floors. Tanner is sure it's linked to his tentacool and her strange markings. Matthew is following his last lead to find his missing snorunt. What they find will change their world.


An attempt to write a complete short story for the practice. This isn't particularly short but it is complete. An OT story that skips to the main driving plot at the very end to see if it could work. So enjoy my story about a teenage boy who got a tentacool for a starter a couple years ago, and also an ode to Cinnabar Island.

...

I shouldn't be here. It's creepy, I'm a crap trainer, I need to buy food and not more repels. But I only need a little longer.

There's a scratching noise in the hallway. A wild pokemon, but it won't come any closer. I go back to looking through the bookcase. It's mostly textbooks, math and science. Some are mythology, discussing how mew was at the beginning when pokemon and humans were the same. These books are all yellowed, the spines rotting away. They aren't what I'm looking for. Something used, something out of place. Like the pens I've seen left out. The odd desk that had been wiped clean. Proof something is going on here.

Most people would only notice the burnt plastic smell of the carpet, charred wood, and grimer in the old pipes. There's something strange about the Pokemon Mansion though. A scent like afterbirth seeps up from under the floor.

I've always been able to smell water at a great distance, ever since I ran away with my tentacool. They call it dousing, but I'm pretty sure that isn't right. I can sense it, just like a camper and her nidoran can navigate the forests with ease.

Something catches my eye, a wire-bound notebook is at the end of a shelf. It's green, the wire is all shiny and the paper is white. I pull it out and a bunch of pages fall to the floor. The separate pages are old and yellowed, some even burned in parts. On them are impenetrable tables with words like salinity and amino acid balance, I set them aside. Then there's a list of names, trainers and pokemon. I could recognize a few from championship qualifiers on tv. Shellshocker the blastoise was the coolest when I was a kid. I find the corresponding page in the new notes, but the names are different. The pokemon listed seem familiar somehow.

I hear footsteps in the hall. I can't let them see this notebook. They'll think I'm crazy, it's full of random people's names. No one believes me that I can sense underground springs, and this is far stranger. My backpack in the corner is full to bursting with repels. I take the notebook and curl up under the desk.

"Man, this place was supposed to be full of fire types. How am I supposed to get Cubone to evolve fighting with just rattata," a boy said.

"Oh come on, I don't stand a chance against Blaine with Kadabra missing," a girl said.

"Hey, a raticate."

I could go out and talk to them. But people have been on edge lately with the rash of pokemon disappearances, and this notebook... The pokemon listed have been in the news, it's been going on for months.

"Cubone, use bone club!" the boy orders.

The raticate screeches. There's a crunching noise when the cubone's attack connects. The smell of blood makes my head fuzzy. The sense of the strange scented water under the floor is gone, replaced by a pounding headache. Usually it isn't so bad, out here on the island with the salt water all around.

They chat some and decide to look for stronger pokemon in the higher floors.

Once I can't hear their footsteps anymore, I come out. The raticate lies against the wall, fainted. There's blood dripping from its mouth and it could drown if it stays like that. It looks just like my old raticate, but then I'd fainted before I could help her. It's just like what happened to Runa when I realized it would be safer to trade her away.

It's a bad idea but its getting to dusk, this shouldn't work too well.

"Gaia," I call out my solrock. It floats, eyes always expressionless, between the injured raticate and I. "Use morning sun, try to heal it."

A low moan as it moves over the downed pokemon. The sound actually was a lot like a whale. A whale that I wasn't sure wanted to kill me at a given time. My best friend Ariel was willing to trade it to me for my raticate. We thought it could ease my reaction to blood to keep a stone pokemon for awhile, and as a professional trainer she could keep Runa safe. The solrock began to shimmer. Its dull orange stone became covered in tiny stars. They began to roll together like rain on a window and fell on the raticate.

The wild pokemon's wound closed and most of the blood disappears. The black around the edges of my vision goes away and I sag against the wall in relief.

But this isn't my Runa. Furious, the wild pokemon lunges at me. I cringe behind my arms and prepare for the worst. It doesn't happen. I open my eyes and next to me there's only peeling damask wallpaper and the head of one the abstract mew statues that litter the place.

Huge yellow teeth are inches from my face. It's suspended in midair by psychic energy. Gaia is protecting me, for now. That volcano badge was really worth something.

I'm shaking, but I try not to let it show to my rock monster. "Thanks, Gaia."

I recall it after I'm safe in the study with the door shut. I spray another entire bottle of repel and go back to the notebook. The names didn't add up. The new list certainly weren't more championship trainers, and their pokemon listed were downright plain, yamask, natu, vulpix, snorunt...

There's a groan from under the armchair I'm sitting in. Then a terrible smell. Oh hell. I jump up, shouldering my backpack. There's no way, the repel should keep away anything weaker than Gaia. Nothing is stronger than Gaia.

The muk peers hungrily at me as it seeps in under the crown molding. It raises a huge arm, and I'm running clutching the notebook for dear life.

Wheeling around a corner, I try to remember the layout. Need to get outside. Need to get back to the water. There's no way Gaia will listen twice in one day and if it explodes inside I'm dead a lot faster. I only have my starter pokemon, a tentacool who I used to help me run away from Pallet Town years ago. She's pretty strong, but needs to be in water.

The muk is gaining on me, its roar so low it sets an empty vase trembling. The sunset catches my eye through a window. It's glinting off the waves. Good enough. It's open, the screen is already burned away so I jump.

My heavy backpack takes most of the fall but my shoulder is bashed against a rock. The window was several feet from the ground, even at the first story. Without anyone minding the property, the waves have washed away a lot of the soil. A foot of cement foundation is visible under jagged rocks, and there's a broken seawall. A rock spit is nearby, a metal pole holding up a mildewy clothesline marks the furthest its safe to climb out.

Muk is coming down from the window in chunky plops like curdled milk. I head out on the rocks. When it goes into the water after me I fumble for a pokeball with my uninjured arm. It clicks and a tentacool covered in black markings appears.

"Mizu, use whirlpool!" The tentacool sinks underwater, and a whirlpool forms, trapping the muk.

It's not advancing anymore. That's good. But Mizu can't use another attack without risking breaking the whirlpool. That would be bad because I really don't think she can win. Gaia would love to try explosion on it. I go to take its ball out, but it sends a shooting pain through my arm. I can't swim or climb fast enough to get out of the blast.

Muk roars and the churned water mists up to me.

A fierce barking from the shore. "Li, use thunderbolt!" A blonde teenager and his manectric stand on the washed out yard. Electricity arcs into the muk, and into the water.

It wasn't too bad, but the shock was enough to disrupt Mizu's whirlpool. He'd better know what he's doing, because that was Mizu's strongest attack. "Bubblebeam!"

The muk is hit in the eyes by the stinging bubbles. Then it decides we're the better target. A purple wave of slime is rolling towards me.

"Barrier!" Mizu is immediately between me and the wild pokemon, a pink wall in front of her.

"Thunder!"

With a crack, the manectric sends a lightening bolt into the muk. The sludge wave crashes against Mizu's barrier and splashes the rocks under me harmlessly. The muk sinks under the waves. Now that the danger is passed, I can feel my entire upper arm becoming a giant bruise. There's also this person who saved me.

"Mizu, some light." The tentacool's red head jewels glow. The black markings over her body extend over them and the effect is like a novelty nightlight. The moon is coming out and the long summer dusk is finally night. I climb back to land arduously.

The teenager smiles patiently, with a hand in the manectric's still sparking mane.

"Thank you," I say awkwardly. "its good to meet you..."

"Matthew. It's nothing, I was looking for you." He's eyeing my tentacool's markings. "Tanner and Mizu, right? The Psychic's Guild sent me."

I stiffen. "No one got hurt okay? It was nothing." My tentacool purrs in agreement. I'm a swimmer, a water trainer, but the people in Cerulean sent me to the Guild's doctors after my blood problem showed up. They think it's a phobia and they're better equipped for that sort of thing.

"Ah, that is..." He fidgets with his pokemon's fur. "You're not in trouble."

I look dubiously at him while we climb back to the dirt road. "I just want to go back to the pokemon center and rest." My arm aches, and my fear sweat is starting to soak into the notebook. At least if he asks to see it, he's from the Guild and already thinks I'm crazy.

"Please just come talk to me, I can buy you dinner." He looks tired. In the streetlights on the main road I can see terrible circles under his eyes.

I would resist but I haven't eaten anything but fish my poison pokemon caught in two weeks. It's starting to mess up my swimming muscles. I meekly follow him to the pokemon center.

The entryway is bright and clean. A nurse is on her phone while her chansey plays with a coloring book. A few trainers mill around the hot orange couches. It's a peaceful night. I dump the empty repels in the recycling and there's enough room to stuff the notebook in my backpack.

The cafeteria is mostly empty. Night in summer comes late, it's after nine, and Cinnabar is full of restaurants, bars, and real nightlife. I follow his lead and take a tray.

"Get whatever you want, really. I have unlimited credit." He flashes a grey card. His manectric goes ahead of us, sniffing at the counter intently.

"A food card? Those are for kids, your manectric just thrashed a wild pokemon stronger than the one the Guild is worried about." My stomach growls, and I grab a plate of cheese fries as big as my head before I can consider my feelings about it much.

He doesn't seem bothered. "I'm not a trainer, Li is a service pokemon. I got him through the Psychic's Guild, they gave me a card because he's huge and costs a bunch to feed."

I'm surprised I didn't notice sooner, it fit with Li's calm strength. Watching him peer over the counter, I realize he can probably read. Service pokemon are almost all from retired trainers. They have decided to pursue it on release. But they have too much willpower, and really too much intelligence, for another trainer. I'm wary of them because my solrock's contempt is preferable to a pokemon that can read my mind if not even control it. "You're open about this," I said.

"They told me about your blood phobia," he remarked idly as he takes some soup.

"But thats! I'm not-" I flush and try to complain there's too many people around, but there's only the cashier who's cooing over Li. The manectric has his front paws on the edge of the counter, wagging his bent tail. The pokemon is a foot taller than me standing this way and muscle ripples under rough blue fur. The line server comes back with a plate of spent soup bones for him.

"It's not that weird. If anything your water trick sounds more unusual."

"At least call it dousing like they do!" Li crunches loudly into a bone but I don't stop. "In Cerulean they said it's an old ability, rare, said people used it to dig wells. Mine's got a salt bent because it showed up after I got Mizu."

"That doesn't mean you don't have a blood phobia." Matt says while eating a breadstick.

I dig into my fries and leave the conversation on his side.

"So I have to ask you about Blaine," he says, reading from his phone.

I nod, my face full of fries. He waits while I grudgingly swallow. "I won fair and square."

"Yes, sure." He pokes his phone. "The report describes a solrock that bashed repeatedly into the gym wall, ignoring all commands."

I cringe and sink into my seat.

"When it finally was hit by a fireblast, it exploded with such power, half the battlefield was destroyed. Magmortar sustained no lasting damage and Tanner was declared the winner as the solrock was semi-conscious."

"I... That was..."

"In a gym battle you have every right to use any kind of powerful pokemon that comes into your possession. You aren't in trouble. They just sent me to check on you."

"Its a trade from my friend who's a powerful trainer. We thought if I didn't have a pokemon with such a good sense of smell my blood problem would ease up."

He looked like he might be waiting for a better explanation, but one of the cafeteria tvs distracted him. A news show from the mainland, a twelve year old with blue highlights crying over her missing zorua.

"The Volcano Badge is supposed to help with control." I add hopefully.

He watches for awhile and pauses. "It will some. You're seventeen same as me, you can take care of yourself. I took the job because I wanted to ask you about something else." He draws a shaky breath and I realize he's on the verge of crying.

Li rubs against his leg and I watch the news story shift to an up and coming trainer from Saffron.

Matthew steadies himself. "Your solrock was the second report of an unusually powerful pokemon defeating Blaine. The first was a blastoise." He rifles through his messenger bag with shaking hands. Putting a folder on the table, he pulls out a large color photo. It's a blastoise covered in black markings.

Black markings just like what are all over my tentacool. I had assumed they were some kind of wine stain, even though they coiled across the gems in her head. But these frame the blastoise's eyes, and decorate the shell with ornate whorls. There was no mistaking this pokemon's power.

"These pokemon started showing up around the same time as the rash of pokemon disappearances. These pokemon that look like your tentacool."

I looked at the photo transfixed. I had come to Cinnabar because Mizu wanted to. I thought it was some kind of migration. That maybe I would finally have some answers to why I learned dousing and could always smell water, when other trainers with water types just got great at swimming. Why I trained a raticate and instead of a talent for traveling in the forest, I got migraines from the scent of blood.

He's talking again and I'm listening alertly. "It's just the only lead I have. My snorunt is missing, and there's something strange about her. Something you might not believe."

"Something I might believe." I echoed. The manectric is looking at me, judging my reaction.

"Look at these first." He pulls out some more photos. A twelve year old girl in pigtails showing off red highlights. Shes posing with a near identical girl with coordinated blue highlights, the girl from the TV. "This is one of the first cases, a zorua who mostly spent her time as a human."

The other photos are also of children, but they look kind of blank and happy.

"Ditto tend to look slow posing as humans. Its caused some alarm as many thought they were real disabled kids who had disappeared."

"So? Ditto do that all the time." I try to deflect growing anxiety. "It's scary about your snorunt, but if someones stolen it, the next pokemon center will catch on to it. They'll check her over, give her a bunch of candy, and send her back safe and sound."

"The others are yamask. I'm from Unova, they say the masks they carry are supposed to be stylized versions of the faces they had in their past lives as humans."

I'm starting to feel cold work its way up my spine. "What the hell are you on about? Pokemon disappear all the time. What about a few years back when half the bulbasaur line pokemon in east Kanto went into the Viridian Forest at the same time?"

"That was because a centuries old venusaur was dying, she was their god. That kind of thing happens once in a lifetime, and these pokemon are from all over the world." He takes a shaking breath. "My snorunt, Yuna. I could communicate with her just a little. It took a lot of energy for her. But she said she was really a little girl. She got lost in a blizzard and became like that. She's always been like a little sister to me, one who can't really talk if somethings wrong, or scaring her, or..." He crumples and hides his head in his arms. "Whats it matter. I started hearing things when I turned sixteen so no one will believe what I say."

Somehow I don't even think its strange. I hung around Psychic's Guild while they poked at my head to prove my blood thing was a phobia. I'd seen plenty of trainers, real career trainers who talked to thin air, or their ghastly who decided to possess a potted plant. Hitting puberty and then finding out you could lift things with your mind was stressful. Kind of like hitting your stride as a high school dropout turned trainer and then your affinity for water turning into fainting at the sight of blood. His certainty was eerie, but he seemed stable with his massive service pokemon. "I believe you," I said with more confidence than I actually felt about anything pokemon. "Listen, I have this notebook and-"

A quiet insistent beeping from Matthew's phone. "Sorry, I have to go. Skype session with my tutor. Can you clean up?"

We hastily made plans to meet on the beach in the morning. I put the weird folder with my weird notebook, ate the rest of Matt's bread sticks, and went to my room.

The usual accommodations at pokemon centers weren't much. Cinnabar's gym was considered one of the harder of the region, and skilled trainers had the money for better. There was a bed, attached bathroom with shower, and enough space between the bed and wall for a kid to stand sideways. I was not a kid. I spread the contents of the folder and notebook on my bed and stared at the photo of the blastoise.

There's no way. I got up and dug around under my swim trunks, selection of potions, and bag of repels that I couldn't fit into my backpack.

I find my badge case, a grand total of four badges. Inside I kept an autographed card of Shellshocker the blastoise. My seventeenth birthday present from Ariel, I was so jealous she battled him in a qualifier tournament in Hoenn. Shellshocker had an extra digit on one hand, no one really believed he'd make a competitive fighter. It caused a sensation when he made top one hundred battlers in all of Kanto.

I check the photo, but I already know, the blastoise covered in black markings has the same extra claw.

...

The next mornings breakfast is fish my awesome tentacool caught. The beach near the pokemon center was rocky and not many people bothered. The gazebo by the street has peeling paint. A poster tacked onto the changing rooms advertizes a bar by one of the nicer beaches in the tourist part of town.

I read parts of Matthew's folder out loud for Mizu while I eat. The tentacool hummed as she watched the dregs of the tiny cooking fire.

Matthew called a greeting I didn't catch and came over. He looked less tired than yesterday. He looked like he hadn't slept in one week rather than two. "Hey Tanner, I asked if your solrock was okay."

I glance over at Gaia, floating over the water and staring into the sun. It had been in the same spot for an hour, shining faintly as it took in the light. "It's having breakfast. Don't bother it."

"It's off center though. It doesn't need to watch the sun, the spikes coming out of its body are keeping magnetic balance."

"Gaia always does that." Lots of psychic types look at the sun as a way of seeing the future. Some kind of spiritual thing, maybe. I go back to the folder. For all that it has an eerie focus on the shape-shifting pokemon, Matthew's research is impressive. There were maybe a dozen pokemon sighted with markings like Mizu's. A charizard, venusaur, and blastoise were the first reported, but there were pokemon from all the regions. All hugely powerful pokemon, all on the old list.

I held out the notebook to him. "I found this in the Pokemon Mansion." I made sure to sound as level as possible for the next part. "I think it has your name in it."

Matt accepted the notebook and calmly opened it. He skims quickly, but doesn't pass over the pages of nonsense tables.

"I think, no, I know there's something under there. I've been searching there for weeks trying to find some proof and-"

"Well." He closes the notebook. Putting it in his messenger bag, he gets up, Li hastening to his side. "What are we waiting for?" The best possible reaction. I recall my pokemon and go join him.

The Pokemon Mansion is a lonely place, with gnarled grass in the courtyard, and ivy covering soot stained bricks. The sound of frying noodles at the restaurant a block over is the all that gives the sense of people doing anything here. I walk in, and I've been here so much I can almost see what it would have been. A reddish brown carpet not torn up by rattata lines the entrance, along the walls would be a dozen abstract statues of a mew standing on its hind legs. The ugly things are all over the place, too heavy to steal.

"Tanner?"

A grimer making sure one more bit of carpet is irredeemably fouled breaks my daydream more than he does. We get walking and I lead him to the study where I found the notebook.

The place doesn't really smell that bad for having a muk rampage through. It takes both of us with a power assist from Li to set the armchair upright again. The lowest level of the bookshelf is a bit stained with purple slime, and the curtain billows slightly. Then it hits me, it's a different curtain. That scent like afterbirth is all around, salty like blood but it doesn't set my hair on end.

Li is sniffing franticly at the molding of the wall outside. "What's behind this?" Matthew asks.

Next to the study, a door without a handle is shut. One of the statue bases has been knocked over so it stays closed without a lock "Bathroom. The fixtures were taken out, so grimer come up from the septic stuff."

"Li, help me." They get the door clear easily enough. It swings out in a gust from the blown out window.

This room had aged worse than the others, the floor is starting to rot. The yellowed wallpaper is paisleys on the side where it isn't grey and black ash. The ceiling is sagging in one corner. A pipe flat with the floor and a patch of rotten wood mark where the toilet would have been. Peering at the devastation, I almost missed the indent of a sneaker in the ash where the tiles buckled. I'm starting to feel cold work its way up my spine.

"They were standing right-" Matthew starts.

"Here." We both look at the wall, and there's a perfectly normal light-switch, looking as new as the notebook. I flip it, not knowing what to expect, since the power's been cut long ago.

There's a resounding clunk somewhere.

"Where was that?" Matthew is looking a bit alarmed. Li is pressed against him growling.

But I know. "The raticate." I go back to the hall.

"What?"

"There was a raticate scratching..." I take the edge of the carpet. "Right here." I lift it and pull it back. Painstakingly lined up with the rest of the wood flooring, is a trapdoor with an indented brass handle.

"Are we really going to-"

"Li is a good battler right?"

"I really can't let him faint. It feels like everyone is trying to kill me when he isn't around."

I hide my concern because Li will notice in an instant. If having Mizu's support helps me swim miles in a day, he's got every right to a pokemon that can make him think straight. Though I'm even more sure now that Li can just control him."Come on, I faint at the sight of blood! We're even." I say it with enough energy to half convince myself we'll be okay.

"We're really not." He groans but I can tell he's smirking.

"Look." I dig through my backpack and take out two thick gold ropes. "With you I don't need all the repels, so I brought escape ropes. If it gets bad, tie it around your waist and think of the exit really hard."

He takes one and stares at it. "Don't these cost a fortune?"

"Made from hairs of only the most pampered kadabra. I've been saving them since my sixteenth birthday." Ariel and I never forget eachother's birthdays. I throw open the trapdoor and a draft brings that eerie, alive scent along the stone wall. It's just another cave, I tell myself as we descend.

At the bottom of the staircase is another door. Matt and Li are in front so the manectric can light the way with sparks. They push open the door and...

Light pours out of the room, a soft blue green that makes even the metal floor look a bit friendly. There are dozens of cylindrical stasis tanks, like for reviving fossil pokemon. These are far larger though. The base is as tall as I am made of fluted black rubber. The glass part holding water goes up into the ceiling. I put my hand against it when I hear Matt's startled gasp.

One has a person floating inside. The boy is completely naked and seems peacefully asleep. He looks about ten, but his muscles are corded. I can swim all the way to the Seafoam Islands but he looks stronger.

There are footsteps and we dart behind the tank from them. I've got no idea how Li can move so silently, he must top two hundred pounds.

"Eh-h-h?" a teenage girl stammers. "Sir, there are-"

"I know," a very calm voice says. Rumbling and with a slight sadness he continues "Come out, we can all see you here."

We go back out into the main corridor of the place. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this. A teenage girl with long, frizzy black hair and huge glasses looks at us with as much shock as we do her. A sableye is riding on her shoulder, a contrast with her silver scrubs. Behind her stands a strange pokemon. At nearly six feet, he stands on his toes, knees bent. He regards us with a serious expression, purple tail up and alert.

"I am Mewtwo, and you will be my guests."

The ghost trainer is trembling, but he nods and presses her on.

"Please watch." He waves a three fingered hand, shining with psychic energy.

There's a shift in the air and the tank gurgles. A huge bubble rises up from the base and the boy sinks. All of a sudden his hand is reaching through the black rubber base, and its parting like silly putty. The girl steps into a gush of fluid as the boy falls out. Holding him against her, she opens a pokeball.

A yamask looks around with big eyes before taking in the boy. Then like it was nothing, he sinks into the body, leaving only the clay mask. The boy coughs up some fluid and grasps the mask with unsteady fingers. He lifts it to his face for a moment, then stiffens with a cry. Black markings burn their way around the outline of the mask. He's breathing hard when Mewtwo takes it away. As the boy starts to stand and they wrap him in a white robe, lifted by psychic power.

"H-how-" Matt is barely whispering.

I'm just staring at the boys face markings.

"We've been expecting you Matthew," Mewtwo says, "Tanner and Mizu, you must come too."

Matt is grabbing at Li's mane so hard his knuckles are white, but I'm strangely calm. This place smells so close to saltwater and the light is so nice and blue coming through all the tanks.

We're led down a hallway past what look like sparse dorm rooms. The ghost trainer leads the boy off into one of these. At some point another manectric joined us. Black markings frame his face and swirl along his side. Li and the other manectric growl and circle eachother closely before Li presses back against Matthew's leg.

Something clicks then. "What you did to Shellshocker-" I start.

"Was to prove a point." Mewtwo said. "Long ago, I hosted a grand tournament, with some of the best trainers, the most powerful pokemon. They would face cloned pokemon like me in battle, it would prove we were equal."

Li gives a sharp bark. Recognition? Matt is still trying to take it in, he doesn't notice. I really don't think he understands how powerful Li is, but somehow I trust Li more for being so tame.

Mewtwo continues. "But after our retreat, I traveled the world. I spoke to pokemon, and the humans who were able to listen. The real question is if pokemon, all pokemon, can be equal to humans." His words echo a bit in the stone hallway. The rug is silver, and so are the rooms that are painted, though many are incomplete. This place is meant to house far more people.

"But where does Mizu fit into that? She wanted to come here, I thought it could be a chance to meet more of... The cloned pokemon?"

"Yes, the clones I developed for fighting will be coming out of hiding now. She's a descendant of one who left a bit early." He sets the piece of yamask on his desk and opens a drawer. "First, Matthew, you should have this."

With a shaking hand, the teenager takes a scrap of orange cloth. "Y-yuna... Oh gods, Yuna..." He clutches it. I see him hold back, he's not registering Mewtwo as a person, just a threat. "What have you done with my little sister?" His voice was barely a whisper, not a command. But Li is at the ready, staring down Mewtwo.

"I knew you could find me!" a young girl chirps excitedly. She runs up to Matthew and hugs him before he can turn around. "I missed you big brother!" She's in a light summer dress, between that and her black hair cut straight at the chin, I can see her markings. Along her shoulders and the back of her neck, black swirls look like the outline of a cape or hood.

"Yuna!" He clutches her desperately. "Please don't run away again. I was so worried, so..."

Yuna, the snorunt with the body of an eight-year-old girl, looks at me cheerfully with ice blue eyes. "Thank you too, water trainer. Wanna battle?"

"Ah, I really-"

"Oh fine." She pouts. "Not-Li, think fast!" Spinning around, she holds a palm up to the clone manectric and shoots an icicle at him from thin air.

The manectric lunges forward to catch it in his jaw, but he trips a bit. Favoring an old injury? No there's something wrong. The icicle slides through and slashes into his side. He hisses as blood soaks into sky blue fur.

Any sense of calm I had from the eerie water is gone and black circles form around my vision.

"Not-Li! You were supposed to catch it," Yuna said, shocked and sad at having hurt him.

My head is pounding.

"Um, Tanner is-" Matt said.

I fall to my knees.

"Tanner!"

Matthew is over me looking really concerned or something. It happened so fast Yuna is just looking back over her shoulder. Mewtwo doesn't seem surprised at all. I black out.

…

I wake up on a red couch that was probably lifted from the mansion above. There are people talking beside me, and I feel like they have been for a long time.

"There's no precedent."

"That tentacruel should never have been allowed to leave the island."

"It's not like they'll ever fix him."

There are a few people dressed in silver, speaking hastily. Mewtwo presided over the discussion, occasionally nodding. I realize they're behaving as I was, assuming Mewtwo is a person rather than a wildly powerful pokemon. He notices I'm awake and stands behind me. His fingers pressing into my temples make the room come into focus a bit better.

"Cloned pokemon and their descendants were not meant to be with trainers. There were some side effects to Mizu's doing this, and it is partly my fault." Mewtwo explains, "Your dousing ability would have appeared naturally, but with a cloned partner... It has been corrupted, but can be fixed if you consent."

"You can't!" a dark haired man protests, he seems older, he looks like a scientist but it might just be the glasses. "He won't be- he can't have a normal life."

"He'll be able to train, work, and travel as he wishes, now,"

The fingers against my temple are glowing. I get that overpowering sense of calm, and I'm just floating in blue green water. The sense of a memory, or really just a place. In the void I keep my perfect awareness of the water, of Mizu's place I can barely touch. Only here it doesn't conflict with... My humanity, I realize as I catch a glimpse of pink, cartwheeling in the aqua blur.

"From this day forward and the many before, things are changing. Some humans keep pokemon for pets, others battle. The time when they had no say in it is ending, as more who used to be human walk among them again. Do you consider Mizu your equal?"

The question didn't make sense. Mizu was alive, deserving of respect, but as simple as pokemon came. She wasn't like Li, who had a job even though he was a pokemon, or Gaia, who was powerful enough to change the world around it. "She's my friend." I answer midway. "And I'd do anything to fix this, to be a real trainer again. Running away years ago with Mizu... It gave me back a lot of the choice in life I'd had taken away. I can't lose it again."

"That will have to do. Tanner, your journey in the new world of pokemon starts on this day."

The light against my temples gets so bright its hot against my skin, then burning. I squeeze my eyes shut against it but I can still feel the swirls being engraved beside my right eye.

…

It's been a few months since that day. Getting up in my single room apartment, I grab my light blue work polo and color contacts. I brush my teeth and comb my hair. Using a headband to keep my bangs back, I put medical grade concealer over the black coiling marking beside my right eye. With the contacts, my red eyes are brown. I look human, but Mewtwo gave me Mizu's aspect.

It's quite a jog to the dock, but not so far as the pokemon center. The city is asleep and the smell of the hot springs in the tourist spas is in the air. The sun isn't low enough to change their color but the clouds have the texture of fish scales. Mizu the tentacruel bobs around the marina with a coworker's dewgong. I can train like normal again without my blood problem.

Tourist season is winding down so it only takes a few of us to run the ferry to Pallet Town. I'm washing windows when the time comes for the first departure.

While idly offering sodas and lemonade on deck, a young man catches my attention. His golden hair is spiky, but he wears a collared shirt without a single wrinkle. He isn't making any attempt to hide the red star on his forehead, but no one seems to notice. Now that I'm paying attention, I realize he's manipulating something so their eyes move away. He chats cheerfully with a girl trainer about the same age.

Since that day, I can tell who the others are. Some are young and cheerful like Yuna, some of more indeterminate age like the yamask. Then some just became too smart for their place in the world as pokemon.

The kadabra morph gives me a smile in recognition, like running into a neighbor. I smile back. We haven't come out yet, that's for when there are more of us, but no one talks about the disappeared pokemon anymore. It's slow, but there have been expansions to programs for trainers to communicate with their pokemon using the help of some psychic types. There are some pilots using the dream smoke method from Unova.

Speaking of Unova, Matthew has gone back to see if he could patch things with his parents. He had traveled with Yuna for a little bit, but found it more tiring to have a big eight-year-old who wanted to ride on his back instead of a little snorunt. When he had been given the chance, Li refused a human body. He said he picked his path because humans were readily able to accept he could do the job, rather than battle and have a trainer get credit.

At Pallet town, there's an hour before the next departure so I let my raticate out of her ball. I figured she'd want to run around but Runa just climbs onto my shoulder. A tourist kiosk has posters for an upcoming pokemon tournament. Next to it are some homemade fliers. A young girl with pigtails showing off red highlights is going to talk about pokemon equality at the town green. This zorua girl on this side of the region, and a teenage boy who was a meowth around Saffron and the other cities have been gaining traction as advocates.

"Hope shes not too mad at you." A fifteen year old girl in a ponytail leans against a sign. Beside her, a solrock floats peacefully.

I'm startled. We talk on skype plenty, but we haven't met in person for nearly a year and suddenly she's almost as tall as me. "Nah, we've been through too much." I scratch Runa's head. "You're back early, Ariel. What about that Kalos invitational you beat Shellshocker for?"

"Crobat was injured in an early round. They gave me a pass to come back next year." She grins. "I have to bring this solrock, its out of this world!"

"It still stares at the sun like the world is ending, doesn't it."

"So if you're really sure they don't hate me for, you know..." She shrugs. "Helping you catch Runa and start a years long journey rather than taking you back to Pallet for running away... Could I come for dinner at your parents place?"

"They'd love to meet you, really! They're glad you protected me, and the escape ropes always made them feel better about me going in caves." There's a short horn blast from the marina, fifteen minutes to go. "The ferry docks for the night in Cinnabar."

"I can give you a lift. Lapras needs to work on speed if he's going to win in the Seafoam Cup." Ariel always has her eye on the prize, whereas I'm not a much better trainer than your average eleven-year-old. She took an interest after finding me struggling to swim to Cinnabar Island from Pallet Town with just my starter tentacool. Her starter was a zubat she caught as a kid. We're best friends even if we aren't on the same level.

"Only if you let me show you around the island. Mizu found some caves on the side with the volcano."

"Sounds epic!" Her eyes are flashing at the promise of exploration. "It'll be the perfect thing to cheer up Crobat!"

I turn to rush back to the ferry.

"You'd better not forget my sweet sixteen!" she calls after me.

I didn't, we never forget eachother's birthdays. I ate fish for a week to afford the silver chain, and Runa helped me carve the mew amulet from volcanic stone.

From my home on Cinnabar Island, I know the world will change a great deal.


End file.
